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About Trish from MentalHealthTalk.info

I'm Trish and I am the creator and co-editor over at Mental Health Talk: a site of stories (and the odd cartoon) filled with honesty, emotion and courage by those who have lived experience with mental health issues. I am touched and honoured by these stories and I advocate to herald our voice, for through the experience of our pain, we have wisdom to share with others. Much love to you.

This week’s guest star on Mental Health Talk shares in a thought-provoking piece how he married in high school and through anxiety & depression, he found security in his wife. The marriage falls apart and he has to learn to become independent.

An excerpt from Dave’s story:

Still my mental struggles plagued me. I ignored or avoided them. It’s only in hindsight do I realize the toll my peculiarities would wreak on my relationship. For example, I could not go into a restaurant and ask for a table. I was horrified of this. I always let her do the talking. Nor could I meet a service man at our house. Every vehicle we owned, she negotiated with the salesman, while I sat there, shy, introverted, afraid to speak. She paid every bill, managed every aspect financially – she was my crutch. I couldn’t make appointments over the phone for my kids, and was deathly scared of attending any and every kind of social event alone. As long as my wife was there, I would do okay. Even though it exhausted me, or made me a nervous wreck, I could put myself out there if I absolutely had too, as long as I had her.

In this post, it was my intention to communicate what it is like to live with PTSD–not only the mental symptoms but the physical symptoms I experience as well.

An excerpt:

In the areas of my life that I feel I must keep in order, I need to be able to control everything to feel safe. Thinking about the parts I cannot control sends electrical tentacles throughout my body and my body reacts accordingly; the drumming of my heart piercing my ears, the ungrounded feeling of floating like a buoy on the water, the thick noise of cries that choke my throat and the solid steel wall in my brain that I hit every time I try to rationalize my sense of fear.

This week on Mental Health Talk, Russ writes that after spending 11 years in the British Army, he decides to leave. As he tries to adjust to civilian life he finds himself unable to fit in.

An excerpt from Russ’ story:

It was a very awkward moment and one of my lowest points when one morning, years after I left, I suddenly realised I was no longer in the military. I felt like I did not fit in anywhere. I was not in the forces anymore but felt that civilians were a waste of space and this lead to some self-hate as I was now a civilian.

This week at Mental Health Talk I interviewed Anthony. He shares his story of being fully dependent on his father due to depression for 39 years. Memories of sexual abuse intrude and he finds his independence.

An excerpt from the interview:

He was growing older, single, and still living at home which is the custom in an Italian family. His father’s attitude and emotional abuse toward him had not changed, but he felt a roof over his head and food was the trade-off. He didn’t know what else to do so he put up with it.

His parents were very controlling, more so than over the lives of his brothers. Though he feels their need to control was passed down through generations, it came to a point where his brother helped him put a cheap lock on his bedroom door to protect his privacy. He felt more secure about having this lock and would lock the door every night before he went to bed.

One morning he woke to find his door unlocked. He sifted through his memory of the past night and could not remember unlocking it. He asked his mother if someone came into his room and his mother told him he must have gone to the bathroom and left it unlock. He was almost convinced he had unlocked it while still asleep.

Please head on over to the post on Mental Health Talk to read the full interview. While you are there, please share with us in the comments about your experience with depression and dependency, and/or sexual abuse, or leave your feedback for Anthony. I spoke with Anthony this week and it has been really helpful to him to hear from others in the comments.

Jared is the guest on Mental Health Talk this week. This regular MHT contributor and webmaster of SchizLife.com shares some of the psychic episodes he experienced when he was schizophrenic and what this connection had come to mean in his life.

An excerpt from the post:

I’d like to frame these experiences while keeping a certain question in mind. Did I simply misperceive delusions or were these psychic events truly occurring for me? Even now, I cannot say one way or the other, and I understand that that is the nature of schizophrenic delusions. What I can do is lay out the order of events, internal and external, and let you, the reader, make your own informed decision.

I also find it important to spend the time to wonder if it even matters if the experiences actually happened. Does the validity of the event have any impact on the effect it had for me personally? Should I care about the truth when the result was a beneficial feeling of connectedness with the universe, love, and the divine? Perhaps I’m not meant to know the facts, but only taste the wonderful fruit of an increased wonder and magic in my life.

To read more, please visit http://mentalhealthtalk.info/schizophrenia-stories and while you’re there, we would really appreciate hearing from you in the comments about what you feel have been psychic experiences during your journey with mental health issues.